Chicken houses are used to raise chickens from a young age to an adult bird when the adult chickens are crated and delivered to a processing plant. Modern chicken houses can be provided with automated feeding devices that deliver food for the growing chickens and with automated watering devices that provide fresh supplies of water as the water is consumed by the chickens. Once the chickens have been grown to an adult size and removed from the chicken house, the chicken house must be cleaned to reduce the spread of any diseases from one flock of chickens to the next flock of chickens to be raised in the facility.
Proper cleaning the emptied chicken house requires the removal of the feathers, litter and dirt from the interior of the chicken house. To that end, manually operated blowers are typically utilized by people carrying the blowers through the chicken house structure to relocate the unwanted material into a pile at one end of the structure where a skid steer loader can be utilized to remove the collected unwanted material from the facility. Because of the quantity of feathers, dirt and dried litter found throughout the chicken house structure, carrying manually operated blowers to relocate the unwanted material is a dusty job requiring the use of respirators and eyewear.
Blowers are particularly valuable for cleaning dirt and debris off of the elevated heating systems, such as tube heaters, brooders and space heaters, typically utilized within the chicken houses. In addition, blowers are very useful in the cleaning of the vertically oriented exhaust fans mounted in the chicken house walls, including the fan blades and the shutters controlling the flow of air through the exhaust fans. Cleaning the shutters is particularly sensitive matter for operating chicken houses in the warm summer months as the accumulation of dust and feathers restrict air flow through the shutters, making the fans less effective in operation. Cleaning the shutters is typically accomplished from the exterior of the chicken house.
Skid steer loaders are typically used in the cleaning of a chicken house because of the low profile and the maneuverability of the vehicle is particularly suited to the long, one story chicken house structure. Skid steer loaders have hydraulically driven wheels that steer the loader through differential steering by varying the flow of hydraulic fluid through the motors powering the rotation of the wheels on the respective sides of the loader. Skid steer loaders are provided with a boom structure that terminates at a mounting plate located forwardly of the operator's cab. Different operative devices can be detachably mounted on the boom mounting plate, including buckets and hydraulically driven rotary brooms that can be utilized in the cleaning of the chicken house. Alternatively, small compact tractors can be utilized instead of skid steer loaders, as compact tractors have booms that can carry attached implements as well.
It would be desirable to provide a device that can replace the manually operated blowers to facilitate and speed the process of cleaning chicken houses for the delivery of a new flock of young chickens.